With their overseas travel plans probably stymied for another year, well-to-do Kiwis are spending their holiday money on waterfront real estate instead.
This week, 15 bidders, some from as far as field as Melbourne and Malaysia, competed for an attractive Lockwood home in Omaha, driving the price up another $515,000 from its pre-auction offer of $1.83 million to $2.345 million.
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The three-bedroom house on 562sqm at 40 Meiklejohn Way had a 2017 CV of $1.05 million, but the listing agent for the property, said Bayleys’ Paul Elsden, CVs don’t mean much in the beach suburb north of Auckland.
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“The CV has no real relevance in Omaha, but [$2.345 million] was a pretty amazing price,” he said.
“We had 70 groups through four open homes. It was only on the market for 18 days.”
Elsden, and his co-listing agent Joneen Smith, said that the big appeal of the property was its proximity to the beach – a 200m walk.
The buyers competing for home knew the value of the site and were desperate to get into the beach town.
2 Taumata Road, Omaha, sold for $2.84 million under the hammer. Photo / Supplied
“There are 14 parties that missed out, and it makes me quite sad, to be honest. Some of them we’ve dealt with before, and they’ve missed out a few times. There are not enough sellers and too many buyers,” Elsden said.
Another Elsden and Smith Omaha listing, a four-bedroom home at 2 Taumata Road, also sold last week for $2.84 million – more than $1 million above CV and $140,000 above the pre-auction offer.
Elsden added: “People are buying beach houses because they’re saying, ‘What else would I do with the money?’”
His records show just one listing for all of Omaha for January, with just 11 sales in the first two months of the year. “That’s just crazy - the first time I’ve seen that in 12 years,” he said.
Precision agent Di Balich, who also sells in Omaha, agreed that demand was outstripping the amount of stock available, and was driving record prices in the suburb: in December she sold a five-bedroom bach at 47 North West Anchorage for $4.225 million – almost $2 million above CV - and last month she sold a four-bedroom home at 249 Omaha Drive for $4.375 million and a four-bedroom house at neighbouring 261 Omaha Drive for an undisclosed price “north of $4.5 million”.
47 North West Anchorage, in Omaha, sold for $4.225 million – almost $2 million above CV. Photo / Supplied
“It’s people doing the ‘Omaha shuffle’. These inter-generational properties just aren’t available, so when they come up, they get snapped up. The February buyers were those who’d missed out in December - they understand the value.”
Balich said the market for homes in the $2.5 million price range was huge, and the interest repayments on such a purchase would be less than what they would have spent on their annual overseas holiday.
Bayleys national auctioneer Sam Steele said that Covid had prompted many buyers to bring forward their beach retirement plans. He said that the lack of stock had made people “quite anxious to secure those places”.
He said: “They were quite popular before, but that’s just been boosted, people are prepared to go for it more. And when the places that have been in the family for 20 or 30 years come to market, they always go.”
He added: “February and March have been the busiest ever and there are no signs it’s slowing down, April is already looking very strong.”
